Monday, March 03, 2014

Hey everyone! How's it going? It's been a pretty interesting week over
here in the land of Yamate. Spring is here, along with all it's crazy
weather. It was blistering hot on Friday, then cold and rainy all day
on Sunday. I'm looking forward to when it warms up for good. I've been
told the cherry blossoms will start blooming in a few weeks too, so
I'm looking forward to that.
Tuesday afternoon we were able to meet with Yuji again. He's the one I
mentioned in the video last week who is a peace messenger. Basically
he goes all over the world trying to spread the message of peace
through these different workshops and what not that he does. We had
been trying to figure out what we could share with him, and in my
study I just so happened to be at the part of the Book of Mormon where
the Lamanites who were converted by Ammon and his brothers were being
persecuted by the other Lamanites. As you'll recall, these people
chose to bury their weapons with an oath to never shed the blood of a
man again. They were willing to lay down their own life rather than
take the life of a brother. We ended up reading that portion with
Yuji, and asked him how many people he knew who would be willing to
lay down their own life than to take the life of another, even for
self defense. It ended up turning into a very good discussion. Yuji is
in Korea for the next week or so, but I'm looking forward to seeing
him again when he gets back.
Saturday we had a war BBQ party. There's this man named Fukukawa who
we met recently who came. He's a really interesting guy. He does
kendo, iaido, and battou. Once he was there, he started doing some
shadow kendo in the parking lot, so I started shadowing with him. Then
he had me do a shadow kendo match with him. Mind you, I've only done
kendo once, and that was forever ago. That was pretty fun. Afterward
he says he's gonna go patrol. I'm just like, "uhh, ok." He then
proceeded to stand out in front of the church parking lot and direct
traffic for cars trying to get in and out of the parking lot, and then
literally patrol the next-door parking lot. Whatever floats your boat,
right? After a while he came back, and he would imitate the sounds of
boats horns or airplanes flying by whenever he heard them. That was
pretty funny. Then, the kicker was when some navy helicopters started
flying by overhead, and he tried to signal them with this little tiny
LED flashlight on his key-chain. Didn't work. So, he's kinda a weird
guy, but he's really nice. I like him a lot.
This week's video is Sister Sato who got baptized here in Yamate not
too long ago. She sang at the BBQ. She's really really good.
Professionally trained operatic trainer. Just take a listen.
That's about it for now. Talk to you all next week! Later!